Surprise Peppers From Seed

In early March, we planted pepper seeds in small pots and put them in a sunny spot in the dining room.  We put three seeds in each pot, thinking maybe one seed per pot would germinate which would give us plenty of plants.

The seeds we planted were from peppers we grew and harvested last year.  It's always interesting to grow peppers from non-commercial seeds because, with one exception, we've found we can never be sure what kind of pepper the seed is going to produce.   Seeds saved from a red pepper in Year 1 might yield a pepper with green and purple camouflage in Year 2.  Seeds saved from a mild banana pepper in Year 1 might produce a mild banana pepper in Year 2, while seeds from the Year 2 mild banana pepper might produce a hot banana pepper in Year 3.  The one exception to this is the small round peppers which we grow from seeds given to us by one of my aunts many years ago.  They always breed true and they are as hot as molten lava.

Nearly all of the seeds we planted in early March germinated and we ended up with dozens of pepper plants.  Dozens and dozens and dozens of pepper plants.  Somewhat insanely, we planted all of them and we ended up with a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes, and heat.  We enjoyed them all summer, plus we de-seeded, sliced and froze bag after bag of them, and we canned several dozen pints of pepper relish and salsa.  It's early October and the garden is starting to fade.  We've saved our seeds so we can start the cycle again in early March.  We can hardly wait.